


Here In My Arms

by dearestheart



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: And it is Very Dark, But Kaidan loves her anyway, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Shepard has A Dark Side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 02:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13401522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearestheart/pseuds/dearestheart
Summary: "We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours."This is the darkest secret nobody knows.





	Here In My Arms

**Author's Note:**

> Hey AO3! So this is my first work on the archive and I wrote this ages ago. This is actually inspired by a conversation with Dorian in DAI, where he tells you that you kill more people than anyone he knows. It got me thinking that if Quizzy kills a lot of people, then Shepard.... yeah. 300,000 batarians guys. 
> 
> Creative criticism and comments are always welcome! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or any of the characters. Unfortunately.

**_“She wears strength and weakness equally well, the girl has always been half goddess, half hell.”_ **

**_-Nikita Gill_ **

 

*****

 

This is the darkest secret nobody knows.

It is there, in the flex of her muscles beneath the ablative plating. It is there, in the flickering blue aura she casts from the smallest of mnemonics. It is there when she wakes and there when she closes her eyes. It is the stench of blood, the smoke of a grenade, the hard recoil of her shotgun.

It is war, and it is in her blood.

Kaidan watches her sleep peacefully in her bed. Her hair is laid out against the pillow, a perfect red halo around her head. Some days, he thinks it makes her look ethereal. Other times, it looks like pooling blood.

He closes his eyes.

They are travelling at warp speed away from the Citadel. The stars blur past them too fast to make out the shapes and colours of and Shepard is the only real thing he sees. He is surprised, that after the fierce, angry argument they’d just had, she'd let him stay. Pointing a gun at each other had ripped new holes in their already strained relationship and they'd needed the out. To yell out all their frustrations at each other.

He could see it, the way the rest of the crew looked at him. They'd welcomed him back for the most part, sure, but he'd seen the disappointed stare Liara had aimed at him, the accusing glare from behind Garrus’s visor. They didn't understand how he could doubt her.

For them, Shepard was all that was good in the world. All that was honest and true. A real Paragon. They didn't see her like he did. They didn't know the reason Shepard was so quick to forgive him for his doubts. They weren't in on the awful secret that festered like a wound beneath the skin. The truth is, it wasn't distrust that fed their arguments and his uncertainty.

It was fear. Not fear _of_ her. Fear _for_ her.

Because there is a depth to Shepard no one else really sees. He was there, that day on Eden Prime when Shepard had slaughtered the Geth with ruthless efficiency, eyes bright and burning. He had been there, on Feros when she’d killed the Thorian asari without blinking an eye. He'd been there on Noveria, when she’d inhaled right before a Charge and he realised she wasn't breathing hard in exertion or worry.

She was breathing hard in excitement.

Garrus was always too far back, stationed at a high point to snipe out targets. He had Shepard’s back through everything, Kaidan would grant him that. But when you only stood behind someone, you never saw their eyes.

And in battle, Shepard’s eyes are always hungry.

Not hungry for the sick twisting in your gut when you take a life, or when you see the light leave someone's eyes. Not hungry for the chill that falls over you when you hear the wet squish a body makes as it hits the ground.

Shepard is hungry for the chase.

For the thrill of exertion, of burning muscles when she runs full speed ahead. For the feeling of her biotics surging up inside her right before she hits the ground in a devastating Nova. For the fear and panic that permeates the features of her enemies when they see her lift off the ground in brilliant blue ten feet away, and know she will be right in front of them in less than a second, bringing a quick death they cannot escape from.

Shepard is addicted to the dance, the rush, the power.

And oh, how much power she has.

She would never abuse it. Kaidan knows this now. He was afraid Cerberus had seen her secret, that they'd given her the means and the weapons and she didn't have the strength or the will to say ‘no’. Now he realises how wrong he was. He strokes a hand down her bare back in a silent, unheard apology.

She had trusted him with this secret. Spoke about it quietly, in self-disgusted tones when he'd confronted her. Shepard had said Anderson was the only other one who'd ever noticed.

Anderson had said that Shepard had strength equivalent to an entire Alliance division. A one-woman army. That she'd seen and faced and survived far more battles than anyone her age had any right to. He'd told her it was an unintended, but inevitable side-effect. That it wasn't her fault.

_Soldiers like Shepard are rare,_ Anderson had said. _Women like Shepard? Even more rare._

Shepard had said, _it's the ugliest thing about me._

He scoffed, because Shepard and the word ugly? It doesn't belong in the same sentence. Even now, seeing her as he does in this light, he doesn't think she could ever be ugly to him, not in any way.

He sees her anger and her rage. He hears her battles cries. And yet, she doesn't scare him. Even though he could never relate to it, even though the maniacal glint in her eyes doesn't seem healthy in the slightest.

Shepard is a storm, raging and violent. She is devastating and destructive. She is beautiful and loud and fearless. She is the point by which people mark their _before_ and their _after_. She is the light at the end of the tunnel and she is the voice you dread in the dark.

Shepard is the reason Kaidan finally understands why hurricanes are named after people.

And as he goes to sleep, gathering her quietly in his arms, as he feels her nudge and snuggle against him until her head rests beneath his chin, he knows they will never speak of it again.


End file.
